


Heather and Oak

by Redneckexol



Category: EXO (Band), Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Character Death, EXO - Freeform, Fantasy, M/M, Monsta X Bingo, Sorry Not Sorry, Tragedy, Werewolf Mates, monsta x - Freeform, slight blood and gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-07-29 13:07:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7685734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redneckexol/pseuds/Redneckexol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes there are battles you can't win.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sacrifice

**Author's Note:**

> #sorrynotsorry for my terrible story telling skills and angst. This is my first submission for monsta x bingo so be sure to check out the other works people have done!

Chae Hyungwon does not cry as he brings the knife in his hand over his best friend’s throat. In many ways Wonho is always lamblike; all long limbs and trusting eyes. He is soft skin and warm smiles, a comforting touch at the end of the day. It only seems fitting to stretch his form over the packed wood altar and pull his head back by his white hair to expose his neck. His eyes watch Hyungwon, throat bobbing with the effort to swallow. There’s a crackle to the atmosphere, an almost electric smell as the clan begin to chant.

It is a sorry thing to see them reduced to blood sacrifices. It has been so long since they had spilled the blood of their own in order to protect the whole of their clan; too long maybe. Hyungwon moves his gaze skyward, tracking the movements of the clouds as they pass overhead. He waits. He watches. And finally, once the moon becomes visible once again, he joins the voices of those around him by arching his neck and howling. The shift in his body comes with the strike of lightning in the distance. Muscle rolls underneath his limbs like the thunder overhead, the cool wind feeling like ice against the burn in his skin. The real pain was bone deep and searing, something wilder than the animal forcing itself over Hyungwon’s human features. It takes his entire consciousness to roll his neck and gaze back at Wonho.  


The bodies around them and their wooden pyre are writhing. Every shift is accented by choking howls and half formed growls. Jooheon is clawing at his own skin. With every lance of claws, he rends another line of human skin, leaving tufts of black fur dotting his body. Minhyuk is jerking against the ground, the loudest of them all as he seeks to break from his current form. Hyunwoo is the quietest, curling in on himself to bite at the soft skin of his stomach. His back is already broken open, revealing broad, tightly packed sinew and muscle twitching under a thick streak of fur. His ears are pointing skyward, already turning towards the eruptions of noise in the forest around them. The night is alight with sound. Everything alive has been woken up by Kihyun’s solemn call. He is the most far gone of the clan, eyes burnt ochre and jaw stretched into a muzzle. He carries his howl over the thunder with an arch of his lupine back, tail breaking from between his thighs in attempt to balance his half formed limbs. Changkyun is crying through his shift, still fighting the way his bones break to form new ones, the seeping acidic feeling of circulatory systems changing, heartbeats altering, and gums bleeding to make room for canines and sharpness instead of molars and flat front teeth. Below Hyungwon’s knife Wonho’s throat jumps. Changkyun is their clan’s pup, Wonho’s pup. They’re all his pups, made out of midnight chases and nips and the teasing sway of a tail. He’s given them all to Hyungwon just as he’s given himself. Just as he is giving his life.

Hyungwon’s straight back gives under the pressure of his rearranging insides. He bends, still proud as his spine curves and his hips buck into an unnatural angle. His nails grow into claws, splitting at the beds and seeping blood across the clean skin of Wonho’s neck. The streaks of red make Hyungown’s sight go hazy, canines elongating in his mouth so that he can no longer hold it closed. There is a shriek as Minhyuk finally breaks his own skin open, dragging long, bloody sheets of it off using the ground beneath him. Hyunwoo is on all fours now, breaking his own fingers to help with the formation of paws. The thunder gives a threatening rumble before cracking into another streak of lightning. The wind is picking up now, tossing Hyungwon’s hair into his face, tearing through the thick brown fur now covering Kihyun’s face.  
They all hear it then; the answering howl of another clan. It’s still far in the distance, but too close to be anything other than a threat. This clan is seventeen strong, all long legged fighters who had been littermates nursed and raised together. Hyungwon had tracked them himself. He knows there is no way his clan can hold their land. But there is pride in the way one can defend it. Hyungwon has pride, but he isn’t ignorant. He knows just by the way Wonho looks laid out on his back, eyes wide and throat exposed, rich scent permeating over the storm smell coming with the wind, that there is no way being slaughtered on the pack’s altar is worse than what will happen to him when they lose. Hyungwon tightens his grip on the knife, watching the way it bites into the taunt skin beneath the blade.

“Not this way.” Wonho tells him. “Have the decency to kill me like a mate should be.” The blade trembles before falling away from the red line tracing Wonho’s jugular. “Put Changkyun here after me.” Wonho licks his mouth, eyes still human as he holds back the tremors in his own body, control still impeccable. “I want to die knowing my youngest didn’t suffer. Swear it.” He watches his mate until he swears, hand shaking with the effort to keep his fingers long and clever. “Now kiss me.” Wonho’s eyes shut. Hyungwon bends, his vertebrae cracking one at a time. His lips meet Wonho’s for a final press of mouths before he lifts his head, opens his lengthening jaw, and snaps his canine teeth into his mate’s exposed throat.

Chae Hyungwon cries when he tastes his mate’s blood, his head moving back to allow the howl caught in his throat. His whole body aches with loss, blood thick across his muzzle as his body continues to shift. He turns his still human eyes to the smallest of his clan, a figure half formed as his brothers stand on four feet. Changkyun was the last pup Wonho gave to him. Hyungwon takes a shuddering breath and falls to front paws, stepping away from the open throat and lifeless body of the man he loves for his smallest pup. The other howls are closer now, the imminent threat of a short-lived clan war coming closer with each heartbeat. Hyungwon swallows a howl and moves toward Changkyun’s shivering form, muzzle open to let his bloodstained teeth shine in the foggy moonlight.


	2. Revenge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes opportunities just present themselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My prompt for this week was amnesia, so I tried to not make it utterly ridiculous. This follows the story set up in Sacrifice, and introduces some new characters. Don't ask me where this is going becuase I have no idea.

The sun is a red wound overhead when the boy begins to come to. His throat matches the gash in the sky, muscles twitching under the sunlight shining across his skin. He appears to be breathing despite the smear of dried blood covering his neck and jaw. There is no longer a wound under the browning streaks, the teeth marks will still be there when he’s washed, but his skin has reformed. There is the broken body of a pup beside the neat wooden altar, hair matted in his own mess, insides of his throat spread into the dirt around him. A proper kill.

Kim Joonmyeon smooths his gaze over the wreckage around him. The clearing that served as this pack’s den is a torn battleground now. The grass is destroyed, blackened, and stomped. There was a fire pit where he is sitting, but the circle of rocks has been flung around, some lost, one still sunk into the head of one of his own pups. The lush wood circling the area is quiet, only the timid songs of birds filling the midmorning still. The bodies of the other pack are together now, save for the pup and the mate. Each of them are strung up by the wrists, hanging from their own limb of a heather tree. Joonmyeon finds it interesting that this pack chose to roost by such a tree. Heather is a bringer of healing from within, immortality and a guide for rites of passage. Joonmyeon's own pack sleep beneath a pair of oak trees when they are in their den, a constant invocation for courage and power, something that has served them well. It had been their alpha’s decision. Yifan had been the one to find the pair, still saplings when he and Joonmyeon had begun to scent one another and chase in the moonlight. It had been Yifan who had opened the throats of the territory’s main alpha pair, offering Joonmyeon the meat and blood as his dowry. It had been Yifan who had pressed a gorged Joonmyeon into the bloody ground and claimed his territory and mate in a single night.

It was Yifan who lay dead at Joonmyeon's feet, head in his mate’s lap while his body rested against his legs. Wolves could heal from many wounds, but even Yifan could not grow his head back. The other pack’s mate had severed his neck in a flurry of claws and fangs. Joonmyeon had felt it before he saw it, a distinct rip in his very being that took his breath and thought as he turned to see his mate’s body fall from his head, jerk against the grass and his own blood, then still. He had killed the other alpha, sank his own fangs into his face then tore his torso open, blood singing with the thrill of death and revenge. But once the alpha was dead and his pack was howling with loss Joonmyeon had felt nothing.

Yifan is not the only body at his feet. Luhan’s crooked form is stretched to his left, pretty face gone and limbs bent at the wrong angles. He is, was, one of Joonmyeon's oldest. He had been the second pup born beneath the growing oaks after his twin, a first litter of many Joonmyeon had labored over and licked clean. There was no cleaning this blood from his skin. On the mate’s right was Zitao. He and Yifan had planned for him to be their last, a pack with eight puppies was one strong and blessed, and it was never good to overreach your blessings. Their youngest blessing covered his brother with his own body, as if his contact could put his scattered guts back in their proper place, remove the stone from his forehead, and make his heart beat again. Sehun had stopped whimpering and crying, his dark eyes wide and unmoving as he lay silent.

The rest of the puppies are gathering around their parent. Minseok shifts by his twin, clever eyes darting from each pack member as if he is afraid one will be missing when he finishes. Yixing leans against his remaining parent, arms wrapping around Joonmyeon’s body in a show of comfort. Jongdae, Jongin, and Baekhyun are piling together on the other side of their father’s torso, fingers dipping into the tacky blood in the dirt beneath their hands. Chanyeol and Kyungsoo sit side by side at Zitao’s feet, eyes on their new leader.

When the mate on the pyre begins groaning Joonmyun starts. He watches the other male shift against the wood, eyelids fluttering with effort. The pups around him slide into a half circle, mouths rolling back over filthy, glistening teeth. After a heartbeat Joonmyeon moves himself, resting Yifan’s head against his shoulders before standing, knees wobbly but strong. He crosses the distance between himself and the other wolf, shoulders straight and chin high. He had watched Yifan walk for years, he knows how to emulate an alpha’s stalk. The mate startles when Joonmyun smooths his hand over his skin. His eyes blink open, wide and brown in the harshness of the sun. When he swallows it looks like it hurts, streaks of blood cracking under the stretch of his Adam’s apple.

“Do you remember what happened?” Joonmyeon plays with the curve of the mate’s jaw as he speaks, pressing the pads of his fingers into the bone. He feels the shake of the wolf’s head. “We almost lost you.” There is a look of loss in the other wolf’s eyes. Joonmyeon cannot tell if it’s the same loss that’s curling around his own soul or loss of meaning and memory. “What do you remember?”

It shouldn’t be much. The mate had been hysterical when he had first woken up, which would have helped him forget. He’d begun screaming when Jongin opened one of his pup’s gut open on the ground beside the altar. It was Yixing who had silenced him with a quick blow to the side of the head, stopping from opening his throat again only when Joonmyeon ordered him. He has always been such an obedient son.

“I don’t know.” The mate’s voice is wrecked, half broken and raspy with the effort of speaking.

“Do you at least know your name?” There is a throb of silence before a response is choked out.

“No.” There is a heartbreak in that word, as if the absence of that knowledge is a sin, an ultimate disgrace. Joonmyeon smiles.

“Your name is Wonho. You’re my pack’s den mother, my mate.” Joonmyeon watches as Wonho blinks, eyelids slow as he struggles to swallow again. “It’s been a long night. We’ve all been through so much. It’s alright if you don’t remember, because we’ll all make sure you never forget.” His fingers dance across the angle of Wonho’s jaw, down to his dirty throat and curls around the newly knitted skin. “Do you want to go home?”

Yixing and Jongdae are moving forward before Wonho even nods. Together they lift Wonho up from the altar and haul him towards the wood line. They move him before he reorients himself, before he can slide his dark eyes over the bloodbath around him and see his mate and pups desecrated bodies swaying on their tree. There’s no need for him to get confused. Joonmyeon turns his attentions to the dangling forms, lips bending back to snarl. Xiumin is at his side, blank face watching, always watching. 

“The alpha will heal, mama.” His eyes are on the long, lithe form of Wonho’s alpha. His front is ragged and washed in blood, but Joonmyeon’s claws are not made to go as deep as Yifan’s were. What has killed the murderer now will only scab over. His heart will start again, his skin will pink and cover the wounds left. Yifan will not have this luxury.  


“I know,” The new alpha stretches his fingers, watching the flicker of bone under muscle and skin. “When he does I’ll kill him again.” And again. And again. And again.


	3. Drowning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Instincts never lie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am trash and put this off forever and I am also sweaty becuase I moved into my dorm today and I swear I smell like fish.

Wonho runs. His chest burns with the effort of it. There is an ache sparking across his calves that is threatening to leave him immobilized if he stops moving. He moves by scent, his eyes blurred from watering in the air against his sight. Behind him he can hear Joonmyeon moving, chasing, racing after him. There is some part of him forcing him to go faster, some itch inside him that makes his skin crawl every time the alpha is near him. Something always feels wrong. So Wonho runs, and Joonmyeon chases.  


Logically Wonho knows he should stop. This is his family he’s running from, his alpha he’s refusing to submit to. But there’s something in the scent of their den and the roll of their bodies that makes his entire body tremble in a way he doesn’t feel like it should. In his mind he knows Joonmyeon is his everything. In his heart he sees the alpha as a threat.  


This run, like the others, ends quickly. The alpha pounces, pressing Wonho shoulders first against the ground. They tumble, they bite, they fight, but ultimately Wonho surrenders all over again. For a heartbeat he feels like he is drowning, but instead of being a solid figure for him to grasp onto it feels as if Joonmyeon is holding him under the water.  


Should alphas be the ones holding their lovers under?


End file.
